May 2015 archive

You stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.

More Knowledge College

History

Film Making

Tonightly it’s ‘Getaway Thursday’, but our panelists are Vincent Kartheiser, Robin Thede, and Rory Albanese.

Continuity

Jordan Klepper Part Deux (Uncensored)

Next week I’m afraid we’re on vacation.  Oh well, more time for a teary David Letterman goodbye.

Rebel Wilson decided to become an actress after a bout of malaria in South Africa while she was a Rotary Youth Ambassador.  She’s Australian and has extensive list of credits on Australian TV as well as U.S. television and films.  She’ll be on to talk about reprising her role as Fat Amy in 2012’s Pitch Perfect in this year’s Pitch Perfect 2.  She’s no longer fits the name very well since she dropped 22 pounds during the filming of Pitch Perfect before being forbidden by the producers to lose any more (continuity, you know) and is now close to her target weight.  She attributes her success to Jenny Craig for which she filmed several commercials before ending her agreement with them.

Maybe that’s where they get the ‘entrepreneur’ from, otherwise there’s not a hint of it in her Wikipedia write up (she’s written, produced, and directed several shows, but that’s not usually called entrepreneurship in the biz they call show).

Reza Aslan’s 2 part web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.

Just a day after stopping the fast tracking of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, the Senate Democrats cut a deal with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to bring it back for another vote:

Under the agreement, the Senate will hold a series of votes on Thursday on three separate trade measures: two standalone votes on bills that reflect Democrats’ priorities, including one that would crack down on Chinese currency manipulation, and then another vote on a bill that would give Obama so-called “fast-track” negotiating authority.

If that sounds like a bad idea, well it is because neither of those bills has the backing from Republicans to pass in the Senate. In the bright side, the exclusion of protection for labor and regulations on currency an manipulation could doom fast track in the House.

Obama and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have been able to count on broad and deep support for the trade agenda, which is less about trade and more about smoothing out regulations to benefit multinational corporations. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) doesn’t have that same luxury when it comes to granting so-called fast-track authority to Obama.  [..]

People close to House leadership say Boehner expects to lose, at this point, roughly 50 Republican votes. Lobbyists and staffers on both sides of the issue said they think such a count is highly optimistic, and that House Republicans realistically have around 140 “yes” votes.

House Republicans start with 245 members and, thanks to two vacant seats, need 217 votes for a majority. Lobbyists and House staffers don’t expect more than 20 Democrats to join with Republicans — the number is said to be at 17 as of now — which would put the tally just shy of the number needed, giving Boehner and Obama a fighting chance to get over the top. But if the GOP is indeed only in the 140s and needs to flip 50 undecided or “no” votes between now and the time of the vote, the challenge is a daunting one. Even getting to 170 would leave trade-bill backers well short.

In such a scenario, lobbyists and operatives say, Boehner would elect not to bring the bill to the floor at all, so as not to set an anti-trade precedent and to spare his members a vote that angers the business community with one decision and the tea party with the other. [..]

The customs enforcement bill would toughen up punishments for businesses and countries that cheat trade rules by underpricing goods, and ban imports of goods made with forced child labor. Somewhat more importantly, the currency manipulation measure within the bill would clamp down on countries that seek to make their goods cheaper by devaluing their own currencies. It’s a major priority for Democrats, but by agreeing to hold a vote on it that’s separate from the fast-track bill, it all but guarantees the House will not take it up.

If House GOP leadership chooses to ignore the bills Democrats demanded votes on in the Senate, and they likely will, House Democrats may try to push the issue.

In the end, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, Javier Becerra, said Republicans shouldn’t expect Democrats to help them out on trade.

“I don’t believe that Republican leaders should count on Democrats to bail them out of their bill, Becerra said.

The short of it: even if these bills manage to make it to President Obama’s desk, he will veto them and we will be stuck with another economically devastating trade bill. The Democrats meed to wake up.

ust about 45 minutes before the tragic train wreck in Philadelphia, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow had this report about the potential for a nuclear disaster, the proximity to nuclear missile sites of rail lines that carry volatile crude oil.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timm: NSA reform is unavoidable. But it can be undermined if we aren’t careful

Congress now has to reform NSA mass surveillance in the next two weeks – whether they like it or not.

Bolstered by a historic court of appeals opinion from last week that ruled much of NSA’s mass surveillance on Americans illegal, Congress is scrambling to pass a reform bill for the NSA before 1 June, when a key section of the Patriot Act, known as Section 215, will expire unless both houses vote to extend it. Now the only question is how far they’ll go.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act is the same law that a three judge panel on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled cannot be used by the NSA to collect every American’s phone records, which is exactly what they had been doing in secret for years before Edward Snowden revealed the program in his very first leak to the Guardian in June 2013.

The court ruling has left Congress reeling, where many thought they might be able to escape without doing much at all; now most members in both parties admit the question is not if the NSA will be constrained but by how much.

Cindy Shaogan: Arctic drilling for ‘extreme oil’ is risky – and letting Shell do the work is reckless

America’s Arctic Ocean belongs to all of us. The Beaufort and Chukchi Seas provide habitat for countless species of wildlife. This is one of the most unique marine ecosystems in the world, home to the entire population of US polar bears. Many of America’s most beloved marine creatures thrive here, including whales, walrus, seals and countless birds.

Yet on Monday, the Interior Department decided to conditionally approve Shell’s risky and dangerous plans to drill in America’s Arctic Ocean. There are many reasons why this is a bad idea.

The Arctic is under the dual threat of climate change and development. This administration has made a strong commitment to working towards mitigating climate change. Drilling in the Arctic is backtracking on this commitment. Burning the Arctic Ocean’s oil could release an additional 15.8 bn tons of carbon dioxide (pdf) into the atmosphere, which is equivalent to all US transportation emissions over a nine year period. Scientists have warned that we need to keep these reserves in the ground to keep global warming in check.

Lots of bad environmental news this week.  I don’t really know much about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) so I’ll let the pieces speak for themselves.

Bees Are Dying and We’ll All Pay for It

Kiona Smith-Strickland, Gizmodo

5/13/15 3:55pm

Bee colonies are still dying, and food may get more expensive as a result.

Beekeepers in the U.S. lost 42.1 percent of their bee colonies between April 2014 and April 2015, according to a recent annual survey. Those losses continue a trend of die offs among bee colonies, which beekeepers say could drastically affect our food supply.

Without bees to pollinate crops, we stand to lose many staple foods that we eat every day, from apples and tomatoes, to onions and berries.

…

Winter losses tell only part of the story. In fact, U.S. beekeepers lost enough colonies during the last two summers to make up for the improvements in winter losses. Last summer, about 27.4 percent of colonies died out. Large-scale commercial beekeepers, those with more than 50 colonies, seem to be especially prone to losing bee colonies during the summer.

Why are bee colonies dying? Several reasons: sometimes they succumb to winter cold, and sometimes a colony falls prey to mites, viruses, or fungi. Colony collapse disorder, or CCD, is one of the biggest problems, and it’s actually pretty creepy. Colonies that have succumbed to CCD are eerily deserted. The adult bees are gone, but there aren’t any bodies. It’s likely that the workers died elsewhere, but they left with unhatched young in the brood chamber, ample supplies of food in the hive, and the queen all alone in the hive.

Researchers think CCD is the product of an unfortunate combination of pesticides, parasites, pathogens, and nutritional problems caused by less diversity and availability of sources of pollen and nectar. Any of those causes could also contribute to more ordinary kinds of colony loss.

A Sharp Spike in Honeybee Deaths Deepens a Worrisome Trend

By MICHAEL WINES, The New York Times

MAY 13, 2015

In an annual survey released on Wednesday by the Bee Informed Partnership, a consortium of universities and research laboratories, about 5,000 beekeepers reported losing 42.1 percent of their colonies in the 12-month period that ended in April. That is well above the 34.2 percent loss reported for the same period in 2013 and 2014, and it is the second-highest loss recorded since year-round surveys began in 2010.

Most striking, however, was that honeybee deaths spiked last summer, exceeding winter deaths for the first time. Commercial beekeepers, some of whom rent their hives to farmers during pollination seasons, were hit especially hard, the survey’s authors stated.

“We expect the colonies to die during the winter, because that’s a stressful season,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an assistant entomology professor at the University of Maryland who directs the survey for the bee partnership. “What’s totally shocking to me is that the losses in summer, which should be paradise for bees, exceeded the winter losses.”

…

Dr. vanEngelsdorp said increasingly poor nutrition could be a factor in the rising summer death rate. Rising crop prices have led farmers to plow and plant millions of acres of land that was once home to wildflowers; since 2007, an Agriculture Department program that pays farmers to put sensitive and erosion-prone lands in a conservation reserve has lost an area roughly equal to half of Indiana, and budget cuts promise to shrink the program further. Dr. vanEngelsdrop and other scientists cite two other factors at work in the rising death rate: a deadly parasite, the varroa mite, and pesticides.

In recent years, some experts have focused on neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides used almost universally on some major crops in the United States. The European Commission has banned the use of three variants of the pesticide on flowering plants, citing risks to bees, and questioned whether they should be used at all.

Honeybees dying, situation ‘unheard of’

By Justin Wm. Moyer, Washington Post

May 14 at 3:11 AM

Just last year, it seemed there was something to celebrate despite planet Earth’s ongoing honeybee apocalypse: Bee colony losses were down. Not by enough, but they were down.

…

“One year does not make a trend,” Jeff Pettis, a co-author of the survey who heads the federal government’s bee research laboratory in Beltsville, Md., told the New York Times.

Turns out Pettis was right. VanEngelsdorp and other researchers at the Bee Informed Partnership, affiliated with the Department of Agriculture, just announced more than 40 percent of honeybee hives died this past year, as the Associated Press reported. The number is preliminary, but is the second-highest annual loss recorded to date.

“What we’re seeing with this bee problem is just a loud signal that there’s some bad things happening with our agro-ecosystems,” study co-author Keith Delaplane of the University of Georgia told the AP. “We just happen to notice it with the honeybee because they are so easy to count.”

…

The state worst affected was Oklahoma, which lost more than 60 percent of its hives. Hawaii escaped relatively unscathed, losing less than 14 percent.

“Most of the major commercial beekeepers get a dark panicked look in their eyes when they discuss these losses and what it means to their businesses,” Pennsylvania State University entomology professor Diana Cox-Foster, who didn’t participate in the survey, said. Her state lost more than 60 percent of its colonies.

The USDA estimated that honeybees add more than $15 billion to the value of the country’s crops per year.

“If losses continue at the 33 percent level, it could threaten the economic viability of the bee pollination industry,” the department said. “Honey bees would not disappear entirely, but the cost of honey bee pollination services would rise, and those increased costs would ultimately be passed on to consumers through higher food costs. Now is the time for research into the cause and treatment of CCD before CCD becomes an agricultural crisis.”

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• U.S. Will Allow Drilling for Oil in Arctic Ocean, By CORAL DAVENPORT, The New York Times
• Alaska’s Tricky Intersection of Obama’s Energy and Climate Legacies, By CORAL DAVENPORT, The New York Times
• Shell’s Record Adds to the Anger of Those Opposing Arctic Drilling, By JOHN SCHWARTZ and CLIFFORD KRAUSS, The New York Times
• Seattle Port Votes to Delay Drilling Rigs on the Way to Alaska, By KIRK JOHNSON, The New York Times
• Port Of Seattle Votes To Delay Arrival Of Shell Oil Rigs, But The Fight’s Not Over Yet, by Natasha Geiling, Think Progress
• Deep-water drilling to resume near site of 2010 BP oil disaster, Al Jazeera
• Enbridge, Michigan settle over 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill, by Renee Lewis, Al Jazeera
• Arctic drilling for ‘extreme oil’ is risky – and letting Shell do the work is reckless, by Cindy Shogan, The Guardian
• Fear of Ruin as Disease Takes Hold of Italy’s Olive Trees, By JIM YARDLEY, The New York Times
• First collision data from a new detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, by Jon Butterworth, The Guardian
• Large Hadron Collider Detects Extremely Rare Particle Decay Predicted By Standard Model, By Avaneesh Pandey, International Business Times (autoplay ad)
• Crew Change on International Space Station Is Delayed, By NICHOLAS ST. FLEUR, The New York Times
• Sarah Brightman cancels trip to the International Space Station, By Martin Chilton, The Telegraph
• A Grisly Find Under a Supermarket Illuminates France’s Medieval History, By AURELIEN BREEDEN, The New York Times
• Gold-Filled Tomb of Chinese ‘Survivor’ Mom Discovered, by Owen Jarus, Live Science
• PHOTON SPACE SAIL successfully Kickstarted into orbit, by Richard Chirgwin, The Register
• All 5 of Pluto’s Known Moons Spied by NASA Probe (Photo), by Mike Wall, Space.com
• Mercury got very old magnetic field: NASA, By: Parham Dolati, Young Herald
• Oxygen on Mars to Make Human Missions ‘Lighter’, AFP
• New details emerge about Ceres’ bright spots, by Laurel Kornfeld, The Space Reporter
• New type of star cluster spotted in neighboring galaxy, by Kathy Fey, The Space Reporter
• New Dinosaur Is Velociraptor’s Cousin, And It May Have Been Even More Dangerous, By Ed Mazza, The Huffington Post

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

May 14 is the 134th day of the year (135th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 231 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1796, Edward Jenner, an English country doctor from Gloucestershire, administers the world’s first vaccination as a preventive treatment for smallpox, a disease that had killed millions of people over the centuries.

Edward Anthony Jenner (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an English scientist who studied his natural surroundings in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. Jenner is widely credited as the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, and is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Immunology”; his works have been said to have “saved more lives than the work of any other man”.

Smallpox

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu witnessed the Ottoman Empire practice of variolation during her 1716-1718 sojourn in Istanbul, where her husband was the British ambassador. She brought the idea back to Britain. Voltaire, a few years later, recorded that 60% of people caught smallpox, with 20% of the population dying of it. In the years following 1770 there were at least six people in England and Germany (Sevel, Jensen, Jesty 1774, Rendell, Plett 1791) who had successfully tested the possibility of using the cowpox vaccine as an immunization for smallpox in humans. For example, Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty had successfully vaccinated and presumably induced immunity in his wife and two children with cowpox during a smallpox epidemic in 1774, but it was not until Jenner’s work some twenty years later that the procedure became widely understood. Indeed, Jenner may have been aware of Jesty’s procedures and success.

Jenner’s Initial Theory:

The initial source of infection was a disease of horses, called “the grease”, and that this was transferred to cows by farm workers, transformed, and then manifested as cowpox.

Noting the common observation that milkmaids did not generally get smallpox, Jenner theorized that the pus in the blisters which milkmaids received from cowpox (a disease similar to smallpox, but much less virulent) protected the milkmaids from smallpox. He may have had the advantage of hearing stories of Benjamin Jesty and others who deliberately arranged cowpox infection of their families, and then noticed a reduced smallpox risk in those families.

On 14 May 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, a young boy of 8 years (the son of Jenner’s gardener), with material from the cowpox blisters of the hand of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom, whose hide hangs on the wall of the library at St George’s medical school (now in Tooting). Blossom’s hide commemorates one of the school’s most renowned alumni. Phipps was the 17th case described in Jenner’s first paper on vaccination.

Jenner inoculated Phipps with cowpox pus in both arms on the same day. The inoculation was accomplished by scraping the pus from Nelmes’ blisters onto a piece of wood then transferring this to Phipps’ arms. This produced a fever and some uneasiness but no great illness. Later, he injected Phipps with variolous material, which would have been the routine attempt to produce immunity at that time. No disease had followed. Jenner reported that later the boy was again challenged with variolous material and again showed no sign of infection.

Known:

Smallpox is more dangerous than variolation and cowpox less dangerous than variolation.

Hypothesis:

Infection with cowpox gives immunity to smallpox.

Test:

If variolation after infection with cowpox fails to produce a smallpox infection, immunity to smallpox has been achieved.

Consequence:

Immunity to smallpox can be induced much more safely than by variolation.

Ronald Hopkins states: “Jenner’s unique contribution was not that he inoculated a few persons with cowpox, but that he then proved they were immune to smallpox. Moreover, he demonstrated that the protective cowpox could be effectively inoculated from person to person, not just directly from cattle. In addition he tested his theory on a series of 23 subjects. This aspect of his research method increased the validity of his evidence.

He continued his research and reported it to the Royal Society, who did not publish the initial report. After improvement and further work, he published a report of twenty-three cases. Some of his conclusions were correct, and some erroneous – modern microbiological and microscopic methods would make this easier to repeat. The medical establishment, as cautious then as now, considered his findings for some time before accepting them. Eventually vaccination was accepted, and in 1840 the British government banned variolation – the use of smallpox itself – and provided vaccination – using cowpox – free of charge. (See Vaccination acts). The success of his discovery soon began to spread around Europe and as an example was used en masse in the Spanish Balmis Expedition a three year mission to the Americas led by Dr Francisco Javier de Balmis with the aim of giving thousands the smallpox vaccine. The expedtition was successful and Jenner wrote, “I don’t imagine the annals of history furnish an example of philanthropy so noble, so extensive as this.”

Jenner’s continuing work on vaccination prevented his continuing his ordinary medical practice. He was supported by his colleagues and the King in petitioning Parliament and was granted £10,000 for his work on vaccination. In 1806 he was granted another £20,000 for his continuing work.

Legacy

In 1979, the World Health Organization declared smallpox an eradicated disease. This was the result of coordinated public health efforts by many people, but vaccination was an essential component. And although it was declared eradicated, some samples still remain in laboratories in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States, and State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia.

The importance of his work does not stop there. His vaccine also laid the groundwork for modern-day discoveries in immunology, and the field he began may someday lead to cures for arthritis, AIDS, and many other diseases of the time.

You stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.

Commencement Season

Soul Daddy interviews Morgan Freeman

Tonightly it’s ‘Mystery Topic’, but our panelists are Joel McHale, Lola Ogunnaike, and Ahmed Ahmed.

Continuity

Kristen Shaal

This week’s guests-

• Wednesday 5/13: Reza Aslan
• Thursday 5/14: Rebel Wilson

Reza Aslan will probably be on to talk about Of Kings and Prophets, a new ABC series based on the life of King Saul.  He will be one of the producers.  His last 2 books, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth were critically well received except on Faux and he has a noted celebrity feud with Bill Maher.

Tom Brokaw’s web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.

Every evening I wait for the phone calls that will tell me who will be coming the next day. The aide, the PT, the nurse, and now that mom’s on palliative care, the nurse practitioner will be making house calls as well. The nurse and the physical therapist are always the same, but the aides have been different every time so far, I jot down their names along with the time window they give me.

The bedroom has been cleared of a washbasket and a storage tote, to make room for a commode and a chair or two for visitors. I tell my boys to please keep the downstairs presentable. Yeah, I know they all come to look after mom, don’t give a hoot about the house, have seen plenty worse, go straight up the steps…I know all that. I also know that the mom who raised me would want them to walk into a decent looking house. It might seem silly, but there’s not much I can do for her now, and I know she would want it.

I’m trying to keep a sense of normalcy for the boys, but I wonder to myself–what is normal for them? Their mommom has been anything but for the past year. But she’s been here, talked to them, liked them, loved them, and now she’s not. She’s mostly unresponsive in her room. If this had happened a year ago I think it might have devastated Baboo, he was her boy, her buddy, but in the past year her aggression has been so scary to both boys, I don’t think they know how to feel now. We’ll figure it out.

Me, I feel like I’m living a waking dream, I try to keep busy, but I can’t seem to concentrate on the book I started. I made some earrings, I made a cake, I play games, I make the appointments, I make hamburger gravy for the second time this week because mom can still mange to eat that. Will this be weeks? Months? There’s no telling at this point. I worry about dad, he doesn’t call me to help when he should, I give him hell, but it doesn’t matter. Am I going to have to start following him around? Listening for movement in that room? He can’t keep trying to change her by himself, he is going to be 80 years old and that shit is totally unnecessary.

For now things are okay. We have help coming in, and family showing up, people I can call if I need to. I keep telling myself I’ll be okay, I’ll get through this, I’ve done this before. But it wasn’t my mom. I used to tell her that I knew I wasn’t her favorite…but that’s okay, she’s still mine.

In an unprecedented break with the White House, Democrats in the Senate refuse to back fast-track authority for the president. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Nobel laureate in Economics Joseph E. Stiglitz joins”All In” host Chris Hayes after he called the president’s criticism “disrespectful.

The 10 biggest lies you’ve been told about the Trans-Pacific Partnership

David Dayen, Salon

You can call it “misleading” or “offering half-truths,” but when push comes to a shove, these are lies

It’s beneath the dignity of the Presidency to so aggressively paint opponents as not just wrong on the facts, but hiding the truth on purpose. Warren has responded without using the same indecorous tactics. Unfortunately, I don’t have the same self-control. So by way of response, here are ten moments where the President or his subordinates have lied – call it “misled” or “offered half-truths” or whatever; but I’m in an ornery mood so let’s just say lied – about his trade agenda:

1. 40 PERCENT: The President and his team have repeatedly described TPP as a deal involving nearly 40 percent of global GDPThis tells only part of the story. [..

The point is that saying TPP is about “40 percent of GDP” intimates that it would massively change the ability to export without tariffs. In reality it would have virtually no significance in opening new markets. To the extent that there’s a barrier in global trade today, it comes from currency manipulation by countries wanting to keep their exports cheap. The TPP has no currency provisions.

2. JOB CREATION: Saying, as the White House has, that the deal would support “an additional 650,000 jobs” is not true. This figure came from a hypothetical calculation of a report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which the Institute itself said was an incorrect way to use their data. [..]

The deal is actually more about building up barriers than taking them down. Much of TPP is devoted to increasing copyright and patent protections for prescription drugs and Hollywood media content. As economist Dean Baker notes, this is protectionist, and will raise prices for drugs, movies and music here and abroad.

3. EXPORTS ONLY: The Administration constantly discusses trade as solely a question of U.S. exports. A recent Council of Economic Advisors report (pdf) touts: Exporters pay higher wages, and export industry growth translates into higher average earnings. But the Economic Policy Institute points out that this ignores imports, and therefore the ballooning trade deficit, which weighs down economic growth and wages.

4. MOST PROGRESSIVE: Obama has called TPP “the most progressive trade deal in history.” First of all, so did ill Clinton and Al Gore, when talking about NAFTA in 1993. Second, there’s reason to believe TPP doesn’t even clear a low bar for progressive trade deals. [..]

Labor groups can only ask the White House to enforce labor rights violations, and for the past several years, the Administration simply hasn’t. So when Obama says violators of TPP will face “meaningful consequences,” based on the Administration’s prior enforcement, he’s lying.

5. CHANGING LAWS: On the controversial topic of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), where corporations can sue sovereign governments for monetary damages for violating trade agreements that hurt the company’s “expected future profits,” the White House has engaged in a shell game. [..]

Even third-party countries have curtailed regulations in reaction to ISDS rulings, as New Zealand did with their cigarette packaging law, awaiting the outcome of a dispute between the tobacco industry and Australia (a suit that continues despite an initial victory for Australia).

6. NEVER LOST: The White House assumes that the only thing America cares about with ISDS is the upsetting of our own laws. [..]

This is irrelevant. What ISDS does is offer bailout insurance policy to multinational corporations. If they run into discrimination or regulatory squeezing by a foreign government, they can use an extra-judicial process to recoup their investment. Workers screwed over by trade agreements have no ability to sue governments; only corporations get this privilege.

7. WEAKENING DODD-FRANK: Obama reacted strongly to Senator Warren’s charge that a future President could overturn financial regulations or other rules through trade deals. [..]

A future President might find it acceptable, and today’s vote on “fast-track” authority would give trade deals an expedited process, with no amendments or filibusters by Congress, for six years, outlasting the current Administration. Scott Walker or Jeb Bush may decide it’s perfectly appropriate to undermine regulations in trade deals.

8. STOPPING CHINA: President Obama frequently casts TPP as a way to “contain” China. [..]

This is so facile as to be totally meaningless. China is a major Pacific Rim economy, and will have a presence regardless of our actions. As former Clinton Defense Department official Chas Freeman writes, “China has been and will remain an inseparable part of China’s success story.” [..]

9. SECRET DEAL: Obama has angrily dismissed the notion that TPP is a “secret” deal, saying that everyone will have public access to the TPP text for at least 60 days before a final vote. This is not the point opponents are making. The vote on fast track would severely limit Congressional input into the deal. And right now, members of Congress can only see the text in a secure room, without being able to bring staffers or take notes, or even talk about specifics in public. That makes the deal effectively secret during the fast track vote. [..]

10. JUST A POLITICIAN: This idea from Obama that everybody opposing fast-track is acting like a mere “politician,” aside from demonizing the concept of representing constituents, neglects the fact that he’s a politician too. [..]

Since Obama has a large platform and will not publicly debate any opponent on trade, he can float above it all, acting like a principled soul only wanting to better the country rather than a transactional ward heeler. This may be the biggest lie, that Obama’s somehow superior to everyone else in this debate.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Marcy Wheeler: Sterling Verdict Another Measure of Declining Government Credibility on Secrets

Yesterday, Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced Jeffrey Sterling to 42 months in prison for leaking information about a dubious CIA plot to deal nuclear blueprints to Iran to New York Times journalist James Risen.

Given how circumstantial the case against Sterling was – consisting largely of metadata – not to mention the hand slap David Petraeus got weeks ago for leaking far more sensitive information and then lying about it to the FBI, that’s a tough sentence.

But given the government’s call, in sentencing memoranda, that Sterling spend up to 24 years in prison, it was, as Government Accountability Project lawyer Jesselyn Raddack said, the least worst outcome.

The sentence should also be seen as a rebuke to the government and its frenzied claims about secrecy, most notably the claim they made in this case that leaking information to a journalist is worse than leaking it directly to our adversaries. [..]

The government’s insistence that whistleblowing and accountability equate to spying is coming under increasing scrutiny, even mockery.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Emerging Populist Agenda

The most surprising development in our political debate isn’t the gaggle of Republican presidential contenders or the ceaseless attacks on Hillary Clinton. What is stunning is the emergence of a populist reform agenda that is driving the debate inside and outside the Democratic Party.

A range of groups and leaders are putting forward a reform agenda of increasing coherence. Today, the Roosevelt Institute will present a report by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is to release a “Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.” These follow the Populism 2015 Platform, released in April by an alliance of grass-roots groups and the Campaign for America’s Future. Also in April, the Center for Community Change (CCC) joined with several grass-roots allies to launch Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All.

Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont), now contending for the Democratic presidential nomination, released his Economic Agenda for America last December. And while Hillary Clinton has chosen a slow rollout of her agenda, the Center for American Progress published the report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity headed by former treasury secretary Larry Summers, widely seen as a marker of where Hillary might move.